President Obama’s Bain Capital mutiny

CHICAGO — President Barack Obama flew into Chicago grimly set on ending the war in Afghanistan — and left his hometown by gleefully starting a new one over Bain Capital with Mitt Romney.

If Obama had any reticence about diving into an election-year controversy at an otherwise deeply sober gathering of world leaders bent on ending 10 years of conflict, he wasn’t showing it Monday when asked about the escalating controversy over Romney’s stewardship of his highly profitable private equity firm.

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The Booker, Bain saga

Obama: Bain attacks fair game

Booker's initial comments

And not just Romney — Obama’s damn-the-torpedoes remarks were also aimed at some of his fellow Democrats who are increasingly anxious that their party’s leader is attacking a private equity firm for doing what such businesses were created to do: make cash within the confines of the law.

“My opponent, Gov. Romney, his main calling card for why he should be president is his business experience,” Obama told American and international reporters at McCormick Place at the conclusion of the two-day NATO summit focused on the seemingly weightier issues of Afghan withdrawal and Pakistan.

The deep blue of the NATO stage backdrop seemed, for a moment, to morph into the sky blue of Obama’s campaign sets.

“When you’re president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. … So, if your main argument for how to grow the economy is ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,’ then you’re missing what this job is about,” Obama said. “It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity, but that’s not what my job is as president.”

Obama’s staff and Romney aides have been locked in an intensifying battle after Newark Mayor — and Obama ally — Cory Booker blasted the Obama campaign’s targeting of the venture capital firm as “nauseating” and a “distraction from the real issues.”

Republicans spent the day seizing on Booker’s comments, hoping to drive a clear wedge between Obama and some Democrats. And Romney cited Booker by name in his own response to Obama’s afternoon attack.

“President Obama confirmed today that he will continue his attacks on the free enterprise system, which Mayor Booker and other leading Democrats have spoken out against,” Romney said in a statement. “What this election is about is the 23 million Americans who are still struggling to find work and the millions who have lost their homes and have fallen into poverty. President Obama refuses to accept moral responsibility for his failed policies. My campaign is offering a positive agenda to help America get back to work.”

For Obama’s campaign, Bain Capital remains a potent weapon against Romney. But for some Democrats, it’s a headache they don’t want.

Obama made abundantly clear at his press conference that it’s on the table, whether members of his party like it or not.

“This is not a distraction. This is what this campaign is going to be about,” Obama said. “Both the upsides and the downsides are worth examining.”

Yet comments over the past two weeks from former White House “car czar” Steve Rattner, Booker and former Rep. Harold Ford underscore the different campaign needs of Obama and fundraising needs of his party, which has already seen a drop-off in Wall Street contributions across the board over the past few years.

WE REALLY DON'T NEED MITTENS This is from an interesting McClatchy article about Mittens the Vulture Capitalist:

In addition to GS Industries, Bain Capital paid $10 million to buy another South Carolina company - Holson Burnes Group, a photo-album maker based in Gaffney. The prospectus shows Bain Capital's partners made more than twice their investment - earning $22.6 million, according to the prospectus - between 1986 and 1992, when Holson Burnes Group went out of business and 150 people lost their jobs.

Honestly I think the Republicans would have a pretty good shot if their candidate wasn't a humorless hypocritical moron. I'm sure we can look forward to Romney's positive message campaign that thoroughly explains his support of TARP and how both Republicans and Democrats played a role in accepting the moral responsibility for failed neoliberal economic principles.

But more importantly, what do the Guerilla marketing talking point machines have to say! Can you please link us a misleading youtube clip preceded by a bunch of partisan nonsense? Michigan model voters go!

The Real Issue is Obama's FAILURES on Economy, Jobs, Stimulus, Obamacare. It will be about you Obozo and not the real job creator! I know you want to change the subject because you cant run your dismal record!!! You are toast and you know it!!!

Even Barry odumbo's supporters have HAD IT with the born FOOL and inept idiot president. The boy is out'a his league! But Barry is good at smoking DOPE and doing cocaine and heroin. Yes, the president is a druggie and has scrambled brains.

The president is a drug using DOPE. He is a cocaine user and an alcoholic.

It is an embarrassment to hear obama continue failing and then LYING and defruading people to cover himself up.

When did you ever hear that private business for profit is bad? You heard Karl Marx say it which is exactly with Barry obama is saying. He is a communist and a subversive to the U.S.